Metal Reviews

Sorry but "almost happened" would never have more consequences than something actually occurring.

Sorry but this is retarded thinking.


Kennedy DID bring the world to the edge of WWIII. Bringing the world to the edge of WWIII is worse than lowering corporate tax rate.


He also did other nasty stuff too which I can't be bothered listing the whole thing (Bay of Pigs, support of dodgy South Vietnamese dictators etc etc etc).

Also why is lowering corporate tax rates bad? Lowering tax rates = more money for investment = more jobs. Lowering tax rates is a standard tool for promoting investment and economic growth.


You just want to think you live in terrible times and that the current leaders are the worst ever.

Lots of people do it, but especially metal heads.

In the grand scale of human existance, we're in the good times even with the current economic woes.

And by pre-1945 standards, the world is relatively peaceful. Our wars today are 3rd rate colonial affairs.

Even from a colonial perspective, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are low casualty affairs when compared to say the Italian annexation of Abyssnia (Ethiopia) or British expeditions to the Sudan in the late 1800's or the slug fests over Haitian independence in the early 1800's.

That doesn't mean Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq are fine. They're not and the moron Westerners never should've got involved the way they did (what ever happened to silent diplomacy?).

So If I don't agree with you that means something is wrong with how I arrived at my conclusions? That's such a junior high argument. Bankers literally robbed each every US paypayer blind and every administration since I've been alive thinks that deregulation and corporate welfare are excellent policy, at the cost of the quality of life to 99.9% of us. I'm sure the million dead Iraqis don't think the situation is arbitrary in the middle east. I bet they wonder why we have to spent every cent we don't have maintaining a massive military to use to perpetuate it's size. We are living in Orwell's world were they just use different words for the same thing and act like it's not a war. It's a war and we unfortunately involved and will be lied to about what is going on for years to come.

Dead1 vs Adveser?!

I've been waiting for this. Can't wait to learn more details about how Nixon was involved in this 'Watergate' thing, especially.

Grab a chair next to me, bro! I'm looking forward to further expounding on Keynesian economics!!

I have never been too much of a fan of your usage of anachronistic examples, personally its irrelevant to me how many casualties died in some obscure conflict hundreds of years ago, when the scales of the conflict were much different and the levels of weaponry had 1/100th of the destructive capabilities as they do today. From a purely militaristic perspective take into account the damage caused by the missiles when dropped, with an entire no fly zone over Libya and varying targets in differing cities, collateral damage will obviously supercede casualties and damage to infrastructure combined with that makes your point at best moot. I have an idea Dead maybe as you suggested with the nuclear situation in Japan, why don't we drop a bomb on Libya, maybe it will make things all better.

The conflicts fought by the US and her allies today are low scale insurgency conflicts - that was my point. The combat tempos are low when compared to most wars - even when compared to say Ethiopian-Eritrean slug fest only 7 years ago (large scale trench warfare).

The destructiveness of weapons is irrelevant in this instance due to highly restrictive rules of engagement. Due to this legal factor and improved guidance systems, collateral damage is minimal when compared to previous air wars (WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iran-Iraq, Gulf War 1991).

If we're talking current examples, the common machette was a much more lethal weapon in Rwanda than a 1,000 lb bomb over Libya.


The truly nasty large casualty wars fought in the last 20 years have been fought using relatively unsophisticated means ala AK-47's and other small arms (e.g. Sudan, Rwanda etc).

An AK-47 or machette is more lethal than any GPS guided bomb if there is intent to use and that intent is not tempered by any rules of engagement.





In case you didn't notice I'm opposed to the action in Libya and want all Western troops pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pointless wars designed to keep turnover for Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, BAe and other weapons manufacturers.

Huh?

Nixon didn't want to hand over the tapes that implicated him with the Watergate incident. He was nearly impeached and was basically forced to resign over it. Gerald Ford then pardoned him for it.

Denying Nixon's involvement or at least knowledge of what transpired is like saying Hitler didn't know about the death camps.

Well, that was basically Goebbels, you know.

Last time I chgecked, Keynesian economics is still what enables people like you and I to live the good life.

Be grateful for it.

Or move to North Korea where it's still all socialist brotherhood.

You might be living in Orwell's world but I'm living it up.

In a week's time it's my second holiday to Europe in 3 years. And after that I'm going to drop $25,000 and buy a new car - in cash.

Life is good.

But in order for it to continue to be good, the economy needs to pick up and get going again.




Nothing new here. Politicians, kings and barons have lied to their subjects for years and have misnamed wars to make the people compliant.

You can't be oppressed because I'm not! LOL. The logic blew me away; I really could care less about the content of their disagreement. Dropping big Gs to buy new wheels!

You misunderstand me. I don't care that you or Adverseer feel "oppressed." I suspect you'd feel that way under any system regardless of whether you were oppressed or not.

My point was, the system works very well for me. For all it's flaws it works for a lot of other people too (in Australia that includes the unemployed pot smoking rejects as well) and that system has enabled the highest living standards in human history.


I don't see the point of changing a system that generally works so some societal misfits living on the fringe can feel "less oppressed."

Blacks, colonized, non-whites, the poor, women, gays, the LGBTQ community are all just societal misfits, which doesn't even get me to the contradictions instilled in masculinity, materialism, beauty standards because those are actually attempts to be inclusive as they exclude.

I'M DONE.

I think you're overexagerating in order to make current Western civilisation seem more bleak. How very emo.


If society was so oppressive, than why have 5 out 6 of my bosses been women (including one CEO, 1 area manager, 1 area service coordinator and 2 district managers) and a number of openly gay people have highly paid jobs too (a couple of senior nurses and 1 unit manager who is also female) and no-one cares what their orientation is.

And when I was in the private sector (accounting then IT), 2 out of 4 of my bosses were women too.

In a truly oppressive soceity, these people would not be able to work, let alone climb the corporate ladder.

Try being openly gay in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Or try being a woman with a career.

As for the poor, they have more rights than bloody taxpayers these days.

What is LGBTQ?

In his defense I'm fairly certain he's only referring to economics.

Lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, how people orient themselves and what they are willing to claim is really important for a notion of self-identity. Their whole lives they are taught to be not what they feel that they are so they're kinda particular as to what they want to designate themselves as. I respect that. Same goes for people who have a preference to be called black or African American.

Just because they reach those statuses doesn't mean they were comfortable within them. A woman being CEO is going to be responded to differently than male CEOs and she is going to have to self-regulate her behavior to either play down certain characteristics in order to fit what people expect of her to be a "woman" and emphasize certain aspects to be "the boss". I wouldn't expect a white middle class bureaucrat to understand that.

I was. After all money makes the world go round.

I would even suggest that improvements in conditions for oppressed minorities have been improved due to increased wealth.

Increased wealth allows following:

1. Gives minorities access to resources and power to promote their cause.

2. When people are comfortable economically, they're less likely to be engaging in oppressive behaviour. When times are good people are less willing to beat on someone they view as different.

3. More money = more money for education. Governments can and have used education as a way of reducing discriminatory views.

Again historical comparisons are appropriate - gays and women in the Western world now have more rights than they ever did.

Progress can be made to further improve things, but then that's always the case.

What you're talking about is cultural values (or lack thereof) and not Orwellian "Big Brother" stuff which is what Adverseer was getting at.

In fact one could argue that the only Big Brother "thought controlling/brainwashing" happening is the government trying to reduce people's prejudices and promote tolerance and equality.


You might want to look outside of conspiracy theories and look at social values and moral codes and how they're created.





My department is dominated by women (last two health ministers have been women, and one of them has since become Premier) so I would suggest they generally don't have to change their behaviour too much to fit into a "men's club."

In fact the CEO I worked under was known to be very ruthless and cunning. She didn't take any shit and neither did most of the other women I've worked for.


Furthermore if people chose to respond in a certain way to societal mores, that's their choice. Under law they're entitled to that.


Your little Communist utopia can never exist because people always have prejudices. These prejudices can be racial, religious, gender, class, sexuality.

They can also be on trivial things as to how a person behaves, dresses or their spending habits (I've known people who have truly hated other people simply because they viewed them as badly dressed).

People have prejudice. Government can try to change this and sometimes people themselves change. But prejudice always remains even if it is hidden below.

Heck even you're clearly prejudiced against me:




By the way I'm technically from your oppressed masses - I'm a first generation immigrant with darker skin from the Balkans. My first language is Croatian and not English.

Yet I don't feel oppressed in any way shape or form.

Whatever. The fact that you can't distinguish prejudices from oppression then I'm not having this argument. Being prejudiced towards people you don't know is rational. Being prejudiced towards someone because they are black is irrational. These types of prejudices are constructed. Prejudices towards others is natural; we develop them as children until we recognize others outside our family as trustworthy. But that's fine.

The arrogance that you presume to know how these women internally feel about how they have to behave is pretty interesting. Although it may appear as I'm doing the same thing, I'm just wanting a society where if they wanted to come out and say they felt that way they could without expecting to be called weak or unfit for the job. I have evidence, cite Patricia Hill Collins "Outsider Within", etc.

Conspiracy theories!? Bitch, all I do is social science. Sociology minor and philosophy major! Social values and moral codes? That's my field. Where the fuck do you think I get this shit? Marx, EP Thompson, Weber, Hill Collins, I'm not messing around. This is science.

Don't equate PC multiculturalism to actual acceptance of difference. GTFO with this notion that attempting to reach a point in society where we respect human beings as human beings is comparable to totalitarianism.

If anything, what you have claimed as showing that you are so free, and this is what you really should respond to because the other points are trivial and you're too ignorant to concede, your freedom founded in your car, decent paying job, total lack of voice in politics insofar as your country wages war across the globe and you have no say in it, that freedom is the same kind of freedom that all of the Oceanians claimed to have in 1984. "I have a home, I have a wife and 2.3 children, all I have to do is upturn my gaze from all the awful things that happen in this world and my country has to be perpetually in the process of conquering the globe so that the wheels stay on the machine and I'm fine with that because we live in Western civilization". Keep your freedom and shove it while I try to undermine it and the civilization that perpetuates it. I want you to feel uncomfortable, I want you to come face to face with the woman who stitches the shirt that rests on your back who won't see her family ever again and hasn't since she was 14 and who will die of some banal sickness which could've been treated but wasn't and was fostered by the awful conditions she lived in cramped with the other workers. You say that's how the world works; I don't want your world. I want to burn it down and give it back to the people who built it in the first place and who you sit atop of each and everyday.